Palace sabotaged tribal meet in Davao – Banayo

The camp of opposition presidential hopeful Sen. Panfilo Lacson accused Malacañang yesterday of "sabotaging" a tribal leaders’ conference in Davao City to prevent Lacson from addressing it.

Lito Banayo, the senator’s political adviser and spokesman, said his candidate was scheduled to address the First Tribal Datus and Elders Convention last Friday but the conference did not push through for lack of funding.

Reliable sources in Davao City, however, said a divided Chinese business community and not the government was the reason for the convention’s cancellation.

They said it was in fact more a problem of finances because some of Lacson’s Filipino-Chinese supporters backed out after they pledged their support to opposition presidential frontrunner Fernando Poe Jr. when the movie star visited the city last week.

Banayo said Roque Agton, regional director of the National Commission for Indigenous People (NCIP), had promised convention organizers that his agency would pay for the convention venue at the Grand Men Seng Hotel.

However, he said Agton questioned the organizers’ decision to invite Lacson as their guest speaker and suggested that President Arroyo should be their guest of honor and speaker.

When they refused, the NCIP official withheld the promised funding assistance, prompting the tribal leaders to cancel the conference, he said.

He added that it was likely that Malacañang was behind the incident.

Banayo said despite the cancellation of the convention, many tribal leaders went to the hotel where the conference was supposed to take place in the hope of seeing Lacson.

Banayo pointed out that it was not the first time that such form of harassment has been done by administration officials to Lacson supporters.

He said when Lacson was invited by rice dealers in Pangasinan, the organizer "received a threat from a top official of Malacañang that their permits would be revoked and their collections with the National Food Authority put on hold if they insisted on having Senator Lacson as their guest."

"And now they are at it again. Malacañang should stop doing dirty tricks to spare innocent people from political harassment by Malacañang against Sen. Lacson," he said.

But in Davao City, an unnamed Lacson supporter said the local Filipino-Chinese business community, like the opposition, was also divided on whom to support in the May 10 elections — Lacson or Poe.

While the source said that Banayo’s claim of Palace sabotage may be partly true, certain sectors admitted problems on support of Chinese financiers here have also emerged.

The Chinese businessmen who trooped to see Poe last Tuesday were the same people considered to be supporters of Lacson before. — Jess Diaz, Edith Regalado